ARTHUR JAFA, LOVE IS THE MESSAGE, THE MESSAGE IS DEATH, 2016
From photographs of civil rights leaders watermarked with “Getty Images” to helicopter views of the LA Riots to a wave of bodies dancing to “The Dougie,” the meticulously edited 7-minute video suspends viewers in a swelling, emotional montage that is a testament to Jafa’s profound ability to mine, scrutinize, and reclaim media’s representational modes and strategies…
PIPILOTTI RIST, EVER IS OVER ALL, 1997
From her early music-video-style works to her later immersive projection environments, Rist’s unique artistic vocabulary is rooted in popular culture, technology, and historical feminist video art…
CHELLA MAN, THE DEVICE THAT TURNED ME INTO A CYBORG WAS BORN THE SAME YEAR I WAS, 2023
Co-commissioned by Sydney’s Powerhouse museum, short film The Device That Turned Me Into A Cyborg Was Born The Same Year I Was, explores actor and director Chella Man’s relationship with the cochlear implant, and the nuances of life on a continuum between the deaf and hearing worlds…
JESSICA YATROFSKY, PHOTOGRAPHY, A HISTORY OF MASTURBATION
The video chronicles an androgynous and tattooed young man, the type of model that wouldn’t be out of place in conceptual style bibles like Re-edition or Man About Town, posing, while a narrator asks the viewer, “Is this Art?,” or, “if the New York Times said this was art, would it be art?…
LOUISE BOURGEOIS, PEELS A TANGERINE
I was making a series for Channel 4 television called ‘The Truth About Art.’ The series included three films—one about God, another about animals and the third about sex. Louise, I calculated, had things to say about all of them. But mostly I was interested in sex…
CINDY SHERMAN, DOLL CLOTHES, 1975
Doll Clothes 1975 is a short black and white silent film by the American artist Cindy Sherman that combines live action with animated sequences. The film begins with a shot of the cover of a book (made by the artist) which is decorated with a flowery border and photographic cut-outs of women wearing old-fashioned hats and clothes…
MIKE BOUCHET, UNTITLED VIDEO, 2011
It’s the first untitled work I’ve made. It’s composited from 10,000 porno videos that were downloaded off the Internet and 10,000 porno videos playing simultaneously in a big mosaic…
WILLIAM E JONES, THE FALL OF COMMUNISM AS SEEN IN GAY PORNOGRAPHY, 1988
The Fall of Communism as Seen in Gay Pornography (1998) is an important video from a moment in Jones’s career when he was beginning to leave behind the world of independent documentary cinema for a more free-wheeling practice that existed – and continues to exist – at the margins between several disciplines…
THE ROOM OF SILENCE, ELOISE SHERRID, 2016
“The Room of Silence,” is a short documentary about race, identity and marginalization at the Rhode Island School of Design. Based on interviews conducted by myself and the campus organization Black Artists and Designers, this film contains well under a third of the stories we collected in March 2016, and an unknown fraction of the stories belonging to students we didn’t have a chance to meet with…
GARRETT BRADLEY, AMERICA, 2019
According to the Library of Congress, around 70 percent of all feature-length films made in the US between 1912 and 1929 no longer exist. In America (2019), artist and filmmaker Garrett Bradley imagines Black figures from the early decades of the 20th century whose lives have been lost to history…
YO MY CRACKA, M. LAMAR, 2017
Yo My Cracka, was composed as a part of Surveillance Punishment and the Black Psyche which has been presented as an evening length multimedia performance for voice and piano as well as an album…
BRUCE NAUMAN, GOOD BOY BAD BOY, 1985
In Good Boy Bad Boy, two monitors are displayed at head height on pedestals. The head and shoulders of a young black man appear on one; on the other is an older white woman. They both speak the same one hundred phrases, which are the repeated conjugation of the verb 'to be' linked with the term 'good boy'…
HAND TO MOUTH, PATTY CHANG, 2000
“Hand to Mouth”, a video from 2000, was made before Chang extended her vocabulary beyond the performance oriented explorations of her own body. In the video, she appears clad in a simple business suit, cheering encouragingly while simultaneously swallowing water and helium squished into her mouth by an invisible performer outside the picture frame…
BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR, 1972
Behind the Green Door is a 1972 American feature-length pornographic film, widely considered one of the genre's "classic" pictures and one of the films that ushered in The Golden Age of Porn (1969–1984). Featuring Marilyn Chambers, who became a mainstream celebrity, it was one of the first hardcore films widely released in the United States and the first feature-length film directed by the Mitchell brothers…
ADRIAN PIPER: WHAT IT’S LIKE, WHAT IT IS #3, 1991
Adrian Piper’s What It’s Like, What It Is #3 (1991), a large-scale mixed-media installation addressing racist stereotypes. Consisting of a gleaming white amphitheater with a nine-foot-tall column at its center and reflective mirrors surrounding its upper periphery, the installation’s sleek geometry recalls a work of Minimalist sculpture…
TONGUES UNTIED, 1989, MARLON RIGGS
Made, in director Marlon Riggs’s own words, to “shatter the nation’s brutalizing silence on matters of sexual and racial difference,” this radical blend of documentary and performance defies the stigmas surrounding Black gay sexuality in the belief that, as long as shame prevails, liberation cannot be possible….